Kyl: No time left for START

With Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pressing for quick ratification of the New START treaty, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) reiterated again on Wednesday there wasn’t enough time left in this lame-duck session of Congress to consider it.

Kyl — who’s been holding out for more money to modernize the nation’s nuclear research labs, among other things — met with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but there was no public signal of progress afterward.

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“There’s a lot going on,” Kerry told reporters after the meeting in Kyl’s Capitol office. “We’re trying to make sure that there is adequate time for each of the things that have to be done. And senators don’t want to feel like they’re being cheated of that adequacy of time. They don’t want to be jammed.”

Currently at the top of Reid’s must-do agenda is a new continuing appropriations measure to fund the federal government and the tenuous deal with the White House to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and unemployment benefits.

“Throw in the other things that the leader wants to do here and you’re up against [Dec. 17], which is the date that he suggested we would leave to finally go home and have a little time before Christmas,” Kyl told reporters.

And trying to ratify the complex nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia “right up against Christmas Eve” is “not a good thing,” he said.

At the White House, President Barack Obama remained optimistic.

“I feel confident that when you’ve got previous secretaries of state and defense — basically, the entire national security apparatus of previous Republican and Democratic administrations ... saying that the New START treaty is important, we’re going to be able to get it through the Senate,” Obama told reporters in the Oval Office after meeting with Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski. “It needs to get done.”

If a vote on START does slip, it would take months to bring it back to the Senate floor, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

“The reality is a delay by three months or six months will have a negative impact on U.S. foreign policy,” he said.